Silver halide photographic materials, such as color photographic materials, including color negative films and color prints, are generally processed by an automatic processor that is operated according to running processing in a photofinishing laboratory. The demand of the market is that results are to be returned to customers in a short period of time. Therefore, processing steps including the development processing step have been tried to make easy and rapid.
However, making the processing easy and rapid, specifically, lowering the replenishment rate and shortening the processing time, lead to problems of the image formed, such as an increase in the minimum density due to residual color and deterioration of preservability of the image.
Generally, silver halide color photographic materials to be used for color negative films and color prints have photosensitive layers of multilayer constitution containing three types of silver halide emulsions applied on a support. These silver halide emulsions contain sensitizing dyes respectively so that they may be spectrally sensitive to blue light, green light, and red light.
Generally, sensitizing dyes in photographic materials are dissolved out in the processing steps, but, if the processing time is shortened, the dissolving out of sensitizing dyes is not carried out satisfactorily. As a result, large amounts of sensitizing dyes left in the photographic material make the image, particularly the white background, colored, thereby making the image unacceptable for satisfactory appreciation. Therefore, a processing composition and a method for forming an image that can solve the problem caused by the residual color are strongly demanded.
To solve the problem, it is known that the residual color due to sensitizing dyes can be lessened to some extent by adding a water-soluble fluorescent whitening agent to a developer, a bleach-fix solution, or a washing/stabilizing bath, which is described, for example, in Research Disclosure No. 20733. Further, for example, JP-A ("JP-A" means unexamined published Japanese patent application) No. 257154/1987 discloses a method wherein a specific sensitizing dye and a specific fluorescent whitening agent are used, and JP-A No. 249243/1992 discloses a method wherein a specific water-soluble fluorescent whitening agent is used.
The methods described in JP-A Nos. 257154/1987 and 249243/1992 are more favorable than the prior art in that residual color is lessened to some extent. However, in these conventionally known techniques that use a water-soluble fluorescent whitening agent, the effect is unsatisfactory when the processing is made rapid at a low-replenishing-rate; and also an increase in the concentration of the fluorescent whitening agent in the processing solution, to obtain a satisfactory whitening effect, results in a problem that deposition of the fluorescent whitening agent occurs during the storage. Although, among the conventional fluorescent whitening agents, compounds that do not cause depositing and that are good in preservability are known, these compounds do not have any effect to reduce residual color or deteriorate the effect of reducing residual color.
The method disclosed in JP-A No. 249243/1992 is more favorable than the prior art in that residual color is reduced to some extent. However, when the inventors tried to conduct rapid processing at a low-replenishing-rate using these prior techniques, the following problems took place: as processing was made easy and rapid, the effect of improving residual color was reduced, and when the processing solution was stored at a low temperature, the fluorescent whitening agent in the processing solution caused depositing.